Blood Moon
Find the difference.
Lovrick spread both arms wide and gestured at himself.
As for the rest, well, it was obvious enough.
"...I did think something was off. You never seemed all that tired."
"That's exactly it. The difference lies in your mana handling. You have a habit of using mana excessively, instinctively. I suppose you couldn't help it, trying to keep pace with the training of the beastfolk and all..."
Lovrick's words struck a nerve.
Thanks to my Inner Heart, I carried a vast reserve of aura, so I'd never once bothered to think about efficiency. On top of that, whether it was sparring with Alta or fighting my way out of the lab, there had always been strong opponents to deal with. Somewhere along the line, pulling on every scrap of aura I had the moment combat began had become second nature.
"Then shouldn't I correct it now, before it's too late?"
"No."
"?"
What?
With a conversation flowing this direction, shouldn't the conclusion naturally be that I needed to learn to stretch my aura thin and make it last?
"Frankly, I'd rather you sharpen your ability to overutilize mana even further."
"...More than I already am?"
"To be honest, when the monsters attacked, I expected you to drop out in under an hour, the way you were burning through mana. But you held on, all the way until you brought down the Wood Giant. That's when I knew for certain."
"..."
"Moving for hours while carrying that absurd a load of mana—that in itself is a tremendous talent. I can't even imagine how sturdy a body it must take to manage it."
Lovrick jabbed a finger at my forearm, almost enviously, and pressed on.
"The Guild is crawling with people like me. The heights an ordinary person reaches amount to nothing more than protecting efficiency. But someone like you, who can shoulder the burden of spending mana freely, can choose a different path—abandoning efficiency altogether in exchange for overwhelming force. It's vanishingly rare."
"...In other words, you're telling me to evolve into a short-burst combat type. I roughly follow, but... if I keep training this way, won't my endurance in battle drop even further? If something like this happens again..."
"Ha. In my whole life, I've seen an event like this exactly twice. Once is now, and the other was on a battlefield. It's not something you'll encounter often—and people like me will step up to cover the gaps, so don't you worry about that."
"I'm with this fool on that one."
Alta, who had been listening quietly from a distance, cut into the conversation without warning.
He was gnawing away at a strip of jerky he'd produced from who knows where.
"The higher up you climb, the more that momentary destructive power matters compared to sustained combat. Some monsters flat-out ignore anything below a certain threshold of impact. Throwing weak attacks at them is a waste of breath, no matter how many you land."
"Besides, since you can already hunt monsters above your own rank, your income is solid. And to borrow your own words—a short-burst type is so rare that any organization would welcome you with open arms."
Alta appealed to the matter of combat outcomes, while Lovrick leaned on the more worldly side of things, each shoring up the legitimacy of their own argument.
At first I had no idea what they were on about, but the more I listened, the more it actually made sense.
"Understood. It really does sound appealing. So how am I supposed to train for it?"
"How should I know? I've gotten along fine without any of that."
"Beats me."
"..."
...
"Don't look at us like that... For now, simply wielding your mana even more fiercely than before should suffice. Your body needs time to grow accustomed to the strain, after all... As for proper techniques, I'm sure you can procure something from the Guild."
Overload.
That was the umbrella term for techniques capable of concentrating every last drop of one's mana into a single instant of explosive power.
Since so few people could actually use them, such techniques weren't widely known—so neither Lovrick nor, regrettably, Alta knew anything at all about Overload.
"Would it be expensive?"
"Secret manuals naturally cost a pretty coin. But with skills like yours, you'll drum up the money soon enough. Worst case, you could always find a patron—"
$!#!#$@$!
While Lovrick and I were hashing out the future, a sudden murmur rippled through the crowd around us.
Every single one of them was pointing at the sky.
Our heads turned upward of their own accord.
"Good heavens."
The moon was moving.
No—to put it precisely, the red paint that had been smeared across its face had begun to writhe.
Goooooo—
The crimson light that had saturated the round moon started gathering, little by little, toward the bottom.
The color deepened as it concentrated into a single point, until at last it shrank to something like a dot and pooled at the lowest edge of the full moon... and then it sent that bloody tear spilling down toward the earth.
KABOOOOM!
Long before it could touch the ground.
The crimson droplet burst apart with a roar like a detonating bomb, scattering in every direction!
The vast majority of the fragments, dispersing at a speed beyond reckoning, tore across the sky overhead and streaked off toward some distant horizon—but a single fragment came plummeting down within view of the village.
"..."
A stunned silence swallowed the crowd.
What could anyone possibly do, witnessing an event on a cosmic scale?
The people simply clasped their hands together and begged for mercy from whatever was to come.
Please, let us return to our everyday lives...
UOOOOOOOO—!!!
"Hurk..."
"God almighty..."
As if to mock the people's prayers outright, a colossal beast materialized from the distant forest.
A Colossal Beast the size of a decent skyscraper.
It was as if a page torn from a myth had briefly flashed before our eyes.
GRRRRRRRRRRRR—!
The moment it let loose that thunderous roar, a wall of sound waves shook our very bones, and an immense, unfathomable mana came surging down upon the village like a tide.
Its strength felt bottomless.
"...This won't do. We run. If we fight that thing, we die. No question."
"No—just hold on a moment."
"Even for you, that's—!"
"Now, now."
Alta lightly restrained Lovrick, who was already lunging to bolt in a way none of us had ever seen from him.
Lovrick struggled briefly, then, realizing it was pointless, let the tension drain from his body.
"You can't possibly mean to fight that thing. This is madness."
"I know it. But... let's just wait and see. Nothing says that thing is coming this way, does it?"
"Well..."
At Alta's words, Lovrick reluctantly nodded.
Truthfully, charging out of the village unprepared would hardly lead anywhere good, so fleeing had to remain the option of very last resort.
'Alta's guess had better be right...'
I watched the Colossal Beast's every movement with anxious eyes.
Before long, it finally took a step.
"Don't come this way... don't come..."
"Please, please..."
GUUUUUMBAKA!
The instant the beast shifted its weight, the vegetation across mountains and rivers alike trembled violently, kicking off a minor earthquake.
And yet relief sighed out of the onlookers.
Because the direction its head faced lay far, far away from the village.
"Hoooooo... thank goodness. It's not coming this way."
With strides as enormous as its frame, the Colossal Beast strode off and soon vanished from sight.
I nearly wanted to dance for joy at not having to face that thing.
Sincere apologies to whoever did have to face it—but just this once, I figured we'd earned the right to be grateful simply for surviving.
"Ahem! So it seems we won't need to run after all."
"Back with us now, are you?"
"Good grief. How embarrassing..."
Lovrick, who had spiraled into panic at the sight of the beast's majesty, snapped back to his senses in a flash.
Facing an enemy of that caliber would rattle anyone's mind loose. He was hardly in a position to be blamed.
"Now then... they're closing in again. A few hundred this time, by my rough count."
Even without peeking at Lovrick's artifact, a cloud of dust was billowing up from far away, visible to the naked eye.
This was getting beyond tiresome.
"This time really is the last. Every monster except that one is following in its wake."
"Now that's the best news I've heard all day."
"And they're mindlessly charging straight at the front gate, so... I think we can all fight this time."
...
"Are you sure it's all right for us to go inside?"
"Yes. You've run clean out of bullets. Linger anywhere nearby and all you'll be is a live target."
"Still..."
"I said go. You've helped plenty."
"...Yes, sir."
Alta sent all the non-combatant personnel—Sophia and the rest—back to the shelter and their homes.
The long battle had exhausted their every means of attack; the bullets coated in magic stone were completely spent. Their spirit in vowing to defend the village themselves deserved high praise, but anything beyond this point was mere bravado.
All they could really manage was to serve as bait, plain and simple.
Weary to the bone, they descended quietly beneath the palisade, fear still written on their faces.
"Well then. Looks like it's just us for this one."
"Are we really going to be able to hold all of them back, though? I feel like a few are bound to slip through."
I murmured anxiously, eyeing the palisade, its repairs hasty and rough after the drawn-out fighting.
Our current fighting strength stood at nine Awakened in total.
Stretching nine people across hundreds of monsters looked impossible.
But Alta rolled his shoulders with a careless shrug and spoke as if it were nothing at all.
"Which is why some of us intercept up front. You're coming with me."
"...I beg your pardon?"
...
I would have liked a calm, measured strategy meeting, but time was short.
And so I ended up marching out beyond the palisade to fight alongside Alta, swept along by his shameless bluster.
It was dangerous, no question—but honestly, I wanted to see how Alta fought when he meant it.
Wouldn't you?
"Jun! If it gets dangerous, just run!"
"Got it!"
"What a eyesore, you two..."
Noah raised her voice from atop the palisade, calling out her worry for me.
She'd originally intended to fight out there at my side, but when Alta insisted she'd be dead weight without mobility, she agreed to join the interception line instead.
Novice Ivan was naturally excluded too, as were Lovrick and his companions, who needed to handle whatever monsters slipped past us.
Which meant that in the end, Alta and I alone strode out beyond the village walls.
...Was this really going to be okay?
DUDUDUDU—
As the triple-digit horde of monsters came charging in, a violent tremor coursed through the ground—something we'd never felt from atop the palisade.
Was this what it felt like to be infantry bracing for a cavalry charge? The impact traveling up through the earth made my innards clench.
Yet even amid the shuddering tremors, Alta calmly shaded his eyes with one hand and peered ahead.
"Let's see... that one's the leader. An Ice Golem. So they came from the snowfields, hm?"
"How strong is it?"
"Weak for a Rank 6. But its defenses are so absurdly thick that it's a headache to bring down."
I see.
Behind the frothing, howling stampede of monsters, an enormous silhouette was advancing at a stately pace.
A frame slightly larger than the Wood Giant's.
Sheathed in glittering blue ice, the thing looked armored to an almost insulting degree at a single glance.
Wait—that thing is actually a living creature?
"Huh. This lot aren't even squabbling among themselves. No doubt that Colossal Beast's doing."
Unlike the usual single-species swarms, the monsters bearing down on us this time came in every shape and stripe.
From familiar faces to things I'd never once seen in my life.
It was practically a zoo.
"Right! We're moving now—keep up!"
"Hooo... let's go."
THUD!
Alta took point.
He launched forward like a beam of light, with enough force to crater the ground where he'd stood.
For a heartbeat I worried he was about to charge brainlessly into the thick of the horde, but my fears proved groundless—Alta quietly angled toward the outskirts.